Works & Process at Lincoln Center World Premiere Video Performance: L’Orient by Kamala Sankaram and Preeti Vasudevan

Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts announce three newly commissioned video performances developed during Works & Process bubble residencies at Bethany Arts Community, Catskill Mountain Foundation, and Mount Tremper Arts that were sequenced directly into filming on location at The New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, facilitated by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The video performances, which premiere on Sundays in April at 7:30pm ET, are part of the series Works & Process at Lincoln Center, which began in November 2020. Each work will premiere digitally at LincolnCenter.org and Lincoln Center’s Facebook and YouTube as well as on Works & Process at the Guggenheim’s Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

L’Orient
Libretto by Catherine Filloux
Music by Kamala Sankaram
Choreography by Preeti Vasudevan
Filmed by Dancing Camera
L’Orient is a multidisciplinary production produced by Thresh, a New York–based performing arts collaborative. The production recontextualizes the Orientalist gaze and its representation of women and people of color in the classical arts. The project envisions Lakmé, the lead character in the eponymous 1883 opera by Léo Delibes, as a twenty-first-century woman situated in the chaotic environment of reality television. Today’s Lakmé represents the voice of a modern woman questioning her constrained role in a patriarchal society. This provocative work features choreography based on the principles of ballet and the Indian dance tradition Bharatanatyam, in dialogue with a score of Carnatic songs (South Indian classical music), operatic vocals, percussion, electronics (including amplified pointe), and a libretto that includes texts in French, Indian Telugu, and English.

The Works & Process bubble residency at Mount Tremper Arts provided an opportunity for the creative team to continue to redefine opera as an intersectional landscape for Eastern and Western artistic disciplines. During the course of the residency, select vignettes of L’Orient were developed that challenge the cultural displacement of exoticized subjects and characters in Western opera. Featured perfomers include Sangeetha Santhebennur, Justine Aronson, Ramona Kelley, Jolina Javier, Dorothea Garland, Weston Krukow, Ted Keener, and Samantha Figgins (not present in the video).

Since the pandemic began, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has driven efforts to bring the power of the arts to New Yorkers outdoors and digitally—from Love From Lincoln Center concerts for individual essential workers to works of art that elevate the voices and lived experiences of people of color in America, such as Carrie Mae Weems’ installation Resist COVID/Take 6!, Davóne Tines’ Vigil, and digital commissions like The Baptism by Carl Hancock Rux. Future international collaborations with the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center in Athens (SNFCC) will bring new approaches to cultural engagement in both cities. These are just the beginning of a reorientation towards prioritizing openness, access, and inclusive excellence – elevating talent from every corner of the globe and fostering a sense of radical welcome on the campus.

Works & Process bubble residencies and reopening performances are made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and Stephen Kroll Reidy.

Works & Process at Lincoln Center digital premieres are made possible by The Audrey and Martin Gruss Discovery Fund. This performance is made possible by Jody and John Arnhold, Arnhold Dance Innovation Fund, and First Republic Bank.

Lead funding for the 2020-21 Works & Process season is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Christian Humann Foundation, Leon Levy Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, NYC COVID-19 Response and Impact Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Evelyn Sharp Foundation, and The Geraldine Stutz Trust, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Works & Process at the Guggenheim
Described by The New York Times as “an exceptional opportunity to understand something of the creative process,” for since 1984, New Yorkers have been able to see, hear, and meet the most acclaimed artists in the world, in an intimate setting unlike any other. Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, has championed new works and offered audiences unprecedented access to generations of leading creators and performers. Traditionally, most performances took place in the Guggenheim’s intimate Frank Lloyd Wright–designed 273-seat Peter B. Lewis Theater. In 2017, Works & Process established a new residency and commissioning program, inviting artists to create new works, made in and for the iconic Guggenheim rotunda. In 2020, Works & Process Artists (WPA) Virtual Commissions was created to financially support artists and nurture their creative process during the pandemic. To forge a path for artists to safely gather, create, and perform during the pandemic, in summer 2020, Works & Process pioneered and continues to produce a series of bubble residencies that resulted in co-producing with Kaatsbaan Cultural Park some of the first permitted outdoor performances in America during the pandemic. The docuseries Isolation to Creation capturing the bubble residencies premiered in 2021 and can be seen on WNET’s All Arts. On March 20, 2021, after over a year of shuttered indoor performances, with special guidance from New York State’s Department of Health, Works & Process, in the rotunda of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, was the first cultural organization to reopen live indoor performances. For more information, visit worksandprocess.org.

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